Congress Due To Grill Ousted IRS Chief

May 17, 2013

Steven Miller, who until this week was acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, is due at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing Friday morning at which he’ll be questioned about the agency’s targeting of conservative groups during the 2012 campaign cycle.

The hearing is due to begin at 9 a.m. ET. It will be webcast by the committee and by C-SPAN. We’ll watch for news and update.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew asked for, and accepted, Miller’s resignation on Wednesday. Late Thursday afternoon, the White House announced that Office of Management and Budget Controller Daniel Werfel would be replacing Miller.

The news broke last Friday that the IRS had admitted that some of its personnel looked for words such as “tea party” and “patriots” on organizations’ applications for tax-exempt status. If those words appeared, the groups’ applications were given extra scrutiny and action on their requests was delayed. A Treasury Department inspector general’s report concludes that “ineffective management” allowed “inappropriate criteria” to be used during the processing of such groups’ requests.

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